 Housework and Living Standards in the LiteraturePenelope Francks ()
Chapter Chapter 2 in Housework, Consumption and Female Labour in Japan, 1600—1940, 2025, pp 9-22 from Palgrave Macmillan Abstract: Abstract The Great Divergence debate, resulting from Kenneth Pomeranz’s work comparing pre-industrial levels of development in Europe and China, stimulated significant new research into the techniques for measuring and comparing standards of living over time and space. These techniques were derived from work on England and tended to assume that household incomes largely depended on the market wage of a male ‘breadwinner’. However, more recent work by feminist economic historians has begun to show that women in fact performed a wide range of productive labour, paid and unpaid, in pre-industrial and industrialising European economies. Moreover, recognition of the continuing contribution of women’s work, unpaid labour and subsistence production to household income can be shown to have a significant impact on the assessment of living standards and their comparison across time and space. Keywords: Great Divergence; Comparison of living standards; Breadwinner household; Women’s work; Subsistence production (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-031-83693-0_2 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-83693-0_2 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan |
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